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Correction

Founded in June 2001, the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa is a collaboration of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Makerere University, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, private industry, governmental agencies and HIV/AIDS researchers and clinicians from North America and Uganda. For more information, call the Alliance at (650) 872-0947.

Infectious disease specialist helps launch
AIDS training program in Uganda

Last winter, infectious disease specialist Stan Deresinski was browsing the Web site of the Infectious Diseases Society of America when he saw an announcement seeking volunteers for a new program to train doctors in Uganda about HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.

The program appealed to Deresinski - a community-based physician in Redwood City who cares for HIV/AIDS patients - because it combined his interests in teaching, tropical medicine and AIDS.

In late June, Deresinski and another infectious disease specialist - Robert Wehbie of the University of North Carolina - returned from Kampala, Uganda, where they spent nine weeks teaching the first two sessions of the training program. The program is run by a San Bruno-based nonprofit called the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa. It operates out of the Makerere University Medical School, one of Africa's leading medical schools.

Deresinski and Wehbie together trained two consecutive groups of 10 Ugandan physicians for one month per group, teaching them strategies and techniques for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of HIV/AIDS. The program included classroom lectures, rounds at Mulago Hospital - a 1,500-bed public hospital in Kampala - and consultations at an affiliated outpatient clinic.

After completing the monthlong program, the participating physicians will train other groups of doctors - an aspect Deresinski finds particularly rewarding. "As a teacher, your influence goes beyond the people you have direct contact with. That's important," said Deresinski, who is associate chief of infectious diseases at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and serves as volunteer clinical faculty at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Although HIV/AIDS is an epidemic throughout Africa - an estimated 28 million Africans are HIV-positive - Uganda is a relative success story. The country has confronted the problem head-on and has implemented aggressive prevention programs. As a result, Uganda has seen a significant decline in AIDS cases and HIV transmission in recent years.

But HIV/AIDS is still a huge problem in Uganda. Fully 70 percent of all patients admitted at Mulago Hospital are HIV-positive, Deresinski said, and anti-retroviral drug treatments are only now becoming available. Deresinski was struck by the many obstacles that make it difficult to provide high-quality AIDS care (and high-quality medical treatment in general). Lab test results are often of questionable accuracy and diagnostic tests common in the United States, such as CT scans, are largely unavailable. "A lot of times, you basically have to guess (the diagnosis) based on the symptoms," he said.

In teaching the physicians in Uganda, Deresinski found he had to adapt his curriculum to the resources available there, working with the physician-trainees to come up with realistic treatment protocols that reflect the reality of medical practice in Uganda.

Deresinski said he developed a great appreciation for the resourcefulness and optimism of the Ugandan doctors, whom he described as "remarkably well-informed and intelligent given the obstacles they're up against." And, he said he feels gratified that his efforts helped improve AIDS prevention and treatment in Africa.

"Obviously what we did was a small activity relative to what's needed, but you've got to start somewhere."